Dirk Niepelt

In the NZZ, Sean Müller und Paolo Dardanelli report about long-term trends in the Swiss federalist structure. Legislation has become more centralized. Implementation less so. Cantons increasingly implement federal legislation. But decentralized authority to collect taxes has remained largely in place. Figure from the NZZ:

Berlin Tegel airport (TXL). Air Berlin flight to Zurich. Passengers have been waiting in the cabin for about half an hour. Apparently, some disagreement or confusion among ground staff on how to deal with delayed passengers. Enter the Maître de Cabine: Ja, meine Damen und Herren. Sie haben es sicher schon bemerkt: Hier wieder mal völliges Chaos in Berlin Tegel … (Well, Ladies and Gentlemen: As you surely realize, we have once again complete chaos here in Berlin Tegel …) While Berlin (and...

The Economist’s economics brief on theories of the firm. For a nice exposition, see the 1998 JEP article by Partrick Bolton and David Scharfstein.

The Economist reports about conflicting strategies among important Bitcoin players; the struggle aligns pragmatists against libertarian ideologists. It also reports about attempts by competing crypto currencies to strengthen corporate governance: Tezos, another blockchain, will … not only have regular votes on competing proposals for how to change the system, but a more scientific approach to evaluating them and a way to compensate the developers for coming up with ideas. If their...

On Bloomberg view, Matt Levine discusses the recent bitcoin fork. The handling of long and short positions on Bitfinex, a bitcoin exchange, created an arbitrage opportunity, until Bitfinex changed its mind. Bitfinex announced a policy to deal with the fork, people took advantage of the policy, and Bitfinex changed its mind after the fact. Each of its decisions was rational, and quite plausibly the fairest option available to it. None of those decisions were required by, like, the nature...

Finanz und Wirtschaft, August 2, 2017. PDF. Macroeconomists are neither forecasters nor economic policy makers. They devise models. Economic policy makers are in charge of applying them.

In a CEPR discussion paper, Cedric Tille argues that Switzerland’s international linkages have been transformed over the last decade. Abstract: Over the last decade, the economic linkages between Switzerland and the rest of the world have been transformed. First, merchanting and the chemical industry account for an increasing share of international trade, with chemicals exports expanding robustly in recent years despite the European crisis and the strong Swiss franc. Second, the nature of...

On his blog, JP Koning discusses “dictionary money” and the ancient practice of simply redefining what “pound,” say, means. People have historically advertised prices for wares using a word, or unit of account, the LSD unit being the most prevalent. … from the Latin librae/solidi/denarii. The monarch was responsible for declaring what these words meant. … something to the effect that a pound, or £, was worth, say … silver coin[s]. This definition was subject to change. … Dictionary...

In a BIS working paper, Dagfinn Rime, Andreas Schrimpf, and Olav Syrstad analyze the apparent breakdown of covered interest parity (CIP). They argue that CIP holds remarkably well for most potential arbitrageurs when applying their marginal funding rates. With severe funding liquidity differences, however, it becomes impossible for dealers to quote prices such that CIP holds across the full rate spectrum. A narrow set of global top-tier banks enjoys risk-less arbitrage opportunities as...

The Bank of England has announced plans to open its central-bank-money settlement system (RTGS) to non-bank payment service providers. This, it hopes, will promote competition, innovation, and financial stability by creating more diverse payment arrangements.